Longtime Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus reports that the band has been working on a new studio album that he hopes will be released "soon."

In a recent interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Fortus says, "[Founding GN'R lead guitarist] Slash is on tour [with his solo band] right now. Once he gets back from that, we're gonna get some more recording done and hopefully get an album out soon. And then we'll get back to touring."

The news follows comments Slash made last August in an interview with U.K. magazine Classic Rock in which he said that Guns N' Roses' future plans likely would include a new album.

"Axl [Rose has] got a ton of s*** that he recorded already, so we're just going to get in there and just start getting into that thing," he revealed, "And then if we do a record and then do a tour, I could see that cycle going on endlessly."

A new studio album would be the first from Guns N' Roses since 2008's Chinese Democracy, and the first to feature Slash and founding bassist Duff McKagan -- who both rejoined the group in 2016 -- since the 1993 covers collection The Spaghetti Incident?

Slash currently is touring Europe with his solo group Miles Kennedy & the Conspirators. That leg winds down in mid-March, but the trek will continue with a series of South American dates in May and early June, before heading back to Europe for more shows scheduled through early July.

After that, Slash Featuring Miles Kennedy and the Conspirators will launch a late-summer North American leg running from a July 15 concert in San Francisco through an August 13 performance in Orlando, Florida.